Category Archives: Stella & Chewy’s

Stella & Chewy’s Raw Pet Food recently opened a 12,000-square-foot plant at W145 S6550 Tess Corners Drive in Muskego. The plant employs 15 people. Marie Moody founded Stella & Chewy’s in March of 2003 in New York City when she had a sick dog, Chewy, and couldn’t find a commercial pet food that was as wholesome as the food she was making in her own kitchen.

“A raw food diet provides your pet with exactly the kinds of food that they would naturally seek out in the wild,” Moody said. “Nothing can replace wholesome foods in their natural, unrefined state. Raw foods contain whole nutritional complexes, and the nutrients in raw foods are totally bio-available. That means that your pet can easily absorb the nutrients they need. As a rule, the closer to the natural source food is, the healthier it will be.”

Opening the plant means that Stella & Chewy’s has stringent quality control over the entire manufacturing process. That quality control begins with the procurement of wholesome ingredients and continues throughout the processing stages.

“Opening this plant has been a dream of mine for some time,” Moody said. “My customers want the best food possible for their pets. We are uniquely positioned to become a national brand. Right now most of our customers are on either coast but we definitely have plans to expand now.”

Like this:

My local pet store stopped carrying Primal nuggets (can order it) but does carry Primal raw chicken necks and a few other things. They continue to carry Bravo and Nature’s Variety and is now carrying Stella & Chewy’s. After doing some googles and reading their website, I decided to try them. You might want to add them to the company lists.http://www.stellaandchewys.com/index.asp

The safety of our products has always been and continues to be of paramount importance to us. In light of recent scares in the petfood world, we want our customers to know what we are doing at Stella & Chewy’s to ensure that they are getting exactly what we promise: the highest-quality and safest products available. We are leading the industry in food safety controls: not only do we have state-of-the-art food safety systems in place, but we also test every batch prior to shipping, for salmonella and E. coli 0157:H7.

The following outlines the steps we are taking to provide products free from harmful bacteria:

1. Dedicated Manufacturing Plant: We produce ALL Stella & Chewy’s products and ONLY Stella & Chewy’s products at our own federally-inspected plant in Muskego, WI. All of our equipment is dedicated to Stella & Chewy’s, including our freeze-dryers, so that we maintain the utmost control over the safety of our products from beginning to end.

2. High Quality Ingredients: All of our farmers and suppliers provide “Letters of Guarantee” stating that their meats and produce are fresh, clean, and test negative for pathogens.

3. Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point Guidelines (HACCP): We follow the HACCP guidelines, a prevention-based food safety system created by the FDA and the USDA. The purpose of HACCP is to identify and monitor specific food-borne hazards – biological, chemical, or physical properties – that can adversely affect the safety of the food product.

4. Hydrostatic High Pressure (HHP): HHP is a technology that is used to reduce vegetative bacteria in foods without the changes that are associated with cooking. The process has little effect on flavor compounds, vitamins and pigments. This method is based on the concept that at deep sea levels bacteria cannot survive where other organisms do. This naturally-occurring environment is recreated in the HHP process, allowing nutritional enzymes and amino acids to remain intact. We use HHP on all of our raw products. To date, this is the only recognized kill-step that does not use heat or irradiation; therefore, it is considered a more natural process. The result is a finished product that is safe and wholesome and still has the natural microflora and nutritional properties as unpasteurized products.

5. Advanced Oxidation Cells: These cells emit low levels of oxidative gases, including vapor Hydrogen Peroxide, that inactivate pathogens such as Salmonella, E. coli 0157:H7 and Listeria monocytogenes. Advanced oxidation cells are used to prevent contamination of surface and air-borne bacteria in the production area. Additionally, the same technology is used in the freeze-dryers and on all conveyors.

6. Consistent Independent Laboratory Testing: We produce everything in small batches. Samples are pulled from the finished product of each batch and taken to an independent laboratory to be tested for for Salmonella and E. coli O157:H7 prior to shipping. Our testing record is impeccable, and we have each batch test results cataloged and available for customers to view online.